Town Burning Underground, Pennsylvania

Centralia sits on a ridge in Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region, a few miles north of Ashland. The railroad arrived in 1865, the town incorporated as a borough in 1866, and for decades it was an ordinary working coal town. At its peak in 1890, it counted 2,761 residents. The event that emptied it began in late May 1962. The borough's landfill was an abandoned strip-mine pit, and before Memorial Day firefighters set the trash in it alight to clean it up. The fire did not stay in the pit. It found a path into the network of abandoned mine tunnels beneath the town and reached the coal seams below. The landfill burn is the most widely accepted account of how the fire started, though some residents and researchers have argued for other origins. Over the next two decades, state and federal crews tried repeatedly to dig out, flush, or starve the fire. None of it worked. Excavation sometimes made things worse by letting fresh air into the underground chambers. Residents reported gas seeping into their basements and smoke rising from the ground. The turning point came on Valentine's Day 1981. Twelve-year-old Todd Domboski was in his grandmother's backyard when the ground gave way beneath him. He held onto an exposed tree root over a steaming hole until his cousin pulled him out. The incident drew national attention to a problem that had been building for nearly twenty years. In 1983, Congress appropriated more than $42 million for a voluntary relocation program, and that August most residents voted to accept it. Families took buyouts and moved, many to nearby Mount Carmel and Ashland. Houses were condemned, boarded up, and demolished block by block. By the end of the decade, more than 1,000 people had left and about 500 structures were gone. The neighboring village of Byrnesville, which sat above part of the same fire, was abandoned too. Some residents refused to leave. In 1992, Governor Bob Casey invoked eminent domain over every property in the borough, and a legal challenge by the remaining residents failed. The U.S. Postal Service discontinued Centralia's ZIP code, 17927, in 2002, and the area is now served through Ashland. In 2009, Governor Ed Rendell's administration began formal eviction proceedings against the holdouts. The standoff ended in October 2013. Eight remaining residents settled their federal lawsuit with the state. The agreement lets them stay in their homes for the rest of their lives and paid them $349,500, after which the properties pass to the Commonwealth. Some holdouts long argued that the relocation was really about the coal beneath the town. That claim has never been substantiated, but it remains part of local memory. Part of Pennsylvania Route 61 through town buckled and cracked above the fire and was bypassed. That abandoned stretch became known as the "Graffiti Highway" and drew visitors for years. In April 2020, the private landowner, Pagnotti Enterprises, buried it under dirt to stop trespassing. It no longer exists. Today, Centralia is a street grid with almost nothing on it. Sidewalks run past empty lots, the borough's cemeteries are still maintained, and on the hill at the north edge of town stands the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church, built in 1911, which still holds services and hosts an annual pilgrimage. Five people were living in the borough at the 2020 Census, making Centralia the least-populated municipality in Pennsylvania. The fire beneath it is still burning. Visiting The public streets are open to walk or drive at any time. Private homes and posted areas are off-limits, and so is the site of the former Graffiti Highway. Pennsylvania officials discourage visits because of ground subsidence and gases near fire zones, so stay on roads and paths and out of fenced or smoking ground. The church's address is North Paxton Street; contact the parish office at 570-648-5932 for service times. The nearest services are in Ashland and Mount Carmel.